New Research Shows Farms Are the Best Land For Solar Panels
The future is bright in agrivoltaics.
When Byron Kominek returned home to his family farm in Colorado in 2016, he decided it was time to do more than produce hay.
The former U.S. diplomat saw opportunity in the 24 acres his grandfather bought in the 1970’s that far exceeded its traditional function. Kominek looked for potential options and stumbled across agrivoltaics — the practice of pairing solar panels with agriculture.
“It sounded reasonable to make power and food at the same place. I thought ‘yeah, let’s do this,’” he says.
Kominek’s solar operation is still in the planning stage, but his farm, now branded Jack’s Solar Garden, is primed to become one of the largest agrivoltaic projects in Colorado, and possibly the country.
Scientists in Oregon recently released a study that found the global energy demand could be met if less than 1 percent of agricultural land was used for solar panels.
Researchers said their work showed farms are the optimal place to install solar panels and hope their findings will help forge cooperative relationships between the solar industry and American farmers.
The study compared data from solar panels Tesla installed on farm land with data they collected at microclimate research stations. Researchers found that panels were most efficient when they were in places that were sunny, cool, breezy and dry.
“If you’re typing on a laptop, you know that when it overheats, it slows down. Panels are made of the same materials, so when they get overheated, they actually function not as well,” says Chad Higgins, the study’s corresponding author.
“By putting the panels in an environment that’s still very sunny, AKA agricultural land, but not very hot, they become more efficient and effective in creating solar power.”
Using satellite image maps, researchers ranked 17 land categories and found solar panels are most productive on crop lands.
The findings built on a 2018 study, which showed solar panels could also increase agricultural production on dry farmland that hasn’t been irrigated.
Researchers found that the soil below the solar panels had higher levels of moisture than patches that had direct sun exposure, thereby increasing water efficiency because less water was needed.
They also noted the areas in the shaded areas under the panels had produced double the amount of plant material than the unshaded areas.
“I think of those two studies as different sides of the same coin,” Higgins says.
“Together they tell the story that the sum of those two is greater than the sum of the parts of their individual abilities to function.”
While Higgins says he’s not familiar with a farm in America that has successfully implemented agrivoltaics, he’s seen the concept successfully implemented in Japan and Italy.
Miles away in Colorado, Kominek says he hopes more farmers get on board.
The farmer says that tracking down investors to help fund his project has proven more challenging than expected, but he’s hopeful that Jack’s Solar Garden will be built by next spring.
Follow us
Republish!
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
-
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
-
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
-
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
-
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
-
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
-
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
-
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].New Research Shows Farms Are the Best Land For Solar Panels
by Lindsay Campbell, Modern Farmer
August 21, 2019
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreExplore other topics
Share With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
Submit
Solar and wind power are boondoggles perpetuated by vested interests. Read any analysis performed by a physicist. Solar and wind will never supply more than a small percentage of our energy needs. State of the art panels produced 2 years ago required 3 years of electricity production just to replenish the energy consumed in the production of the panel. We need nuclear. And we need to discourage 3rd worlders from coming here to live a wasteful 1st world lifestyle.